Loading story…
Ruby on Rails released security updates for CVE-2026-66066, a critical Active Storage vulnerability rated CVSS 9.5 that could allow unauthenticated attackers to read arbitrary files from application servers through crafted image uploads. The issue affects applications that use libvips for Active Storage image processing and accept untrusted image uploads, creating a trust-boundary failure in which Rails passes attacker-controlled attachments to unsafe libvips operations. Exposed data could include secret_key_base, the Rails master key, database credentials, cloud storage credentials, and API tokens.
Rails published patched releases 7.2.3.2, 8.0.5.1, and 8.1.3.1, which also appeared in the project's GitHub release tags. Deployments must also use libvips 8.13+ and ruby-vips 2.2.1+ where ruby-vips is installed, while applications on end-of-life Rails 7.0 and 7.1 must upgrade to a supported branch. Rails advised operators to rotate any secrets readable by the application process after patching; at the time of reporting, no public proof-of-concept or confirmed in-the-wild exploitation had been disclosed, and CISA had not added the flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.
See affected versions and whether adversaries are exploiting it.
6 events from the most recent confirmed update back to the earliest known activity.
Rails disclosed full attack details for CVE-2026-66066 earlier than originally planned after researchers reverse-engineered the issue and published proof-of-concept material. The Rails team also published forensic guidance and assessment tools in the rails/rails-forensics-CVE-2026-66066 repository to help administrators determine exposure and possible exploitation.
A GitHub pull request in the projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates repository introduced a Nuclei template for CVE-2026-66066, describing the issue as a Rails Active Storage arbitrary file read and remote code execution flaw. On July 31, 2026, the PR showed workflow activity including self-assignment, automated reviewer assignment, and a "Ready to merge" label.
A GitHub pull request introduced an initial draft Metasploit module for CVE-2026-66066, described as a Ruby on Rails Active Storage Vips RCE module and labeled "KindaRails2Shell." The item was added to the Metasploit Kanban board and moved to the Todo column on July 30, 2026.
Ruby on Rails released versions 7.2.3.2, 8.0.5.1, and 8.1.3.1 on July 29, 2026. These releases were issued to fix CVE-2026-66066 affecting Active Storage when used with libvips.
Akamai published a warning on CVE-2026-66066, referred to the attack chain as KindaRails2Shell, and released web application firewall protections for customers. The company said it coordinated with Ethiack before public disclosure to prepare those protections.
A technical write-up titled "KindaRails2Shell" described how a malicious MATLAB .mat file declared as image/png could be used against a default Ruby on Rails application to chain arbitrary file read into remote code execution. The summary says the exploit could achieve code execution as root and attributes the research to Ethiack.
Vulnerabilities, threat actors, malware, products, organizations, and breaches Mallory has linked to this story.
See whether adversaries are exploiting this yet, and where the affected versions run in your environment.
47 references tracked. Mallory keeps watching after this page renders.
xakep.ru
Open sourceinfoworld.com
Open sourceboho.or.kr
Open sourcescworld.com
Open sourcegithub.com
Open sourceopenwall.com
Open sourcediscuss.rubyonrails.org
Open sourcedoi.org
Open sourceMap indicators from this story to your assets and identify affected systems in minutes.
Every observed campaign, victim, and pivot linked to actors named in this story.
Malware, exploits, and IOCs connected to the activity described here.
YARA, Sigma, and Snort rules deployed to your SIEM as soon as they’re published.
Get matching new stories delivered to your team as they break — not the next morning.
Ask questions about this story and take action on the answers.
Other stories Mallory is tracking that overlap on entities, sources, or topic labels.
Web applications that process user-uploaded images with **ImageMagick** can expose a broad attack surface when upload controls rely on file extensions or weak type checks. Research describing Rails applications using CarrierWave and MiniMagick showed that attackers may influence both the input and output formats passed to ImageMagick, enabling abuse of vulnerable coders and delegates beyond expected image types. The reports warned that ImageMagick has a long history of flaws including denial of service, memory corruption, and possible code execution, and demonstrated that output formats such as `INFO` and `EPS3` can leak absolute server paths and ImageMagick version details into generated files. The findings align with OWASP guidance on **unrestricted file upload**, which says unsafe upload handling can lead to code execution, information disclosure, client-side attacks, malware hosting, and service disruption. One proof of concept showed that a crafted JPEG of only about 5 KB, with manipulated dimensions of `64250 x 64250`, could drive ImageMagick to allocate roughly **33 GB** of pixel cache and destabilize a host. Recommended defenses included strict allow-listing of formats such as JPEG, GIF, and PNG; validating magic bytes against extensions before processing; enforcing `policy.xml` resource limits and execution timeouts; restricting upload size; using non-executable and isolated storage; sandboxing image processing; limiting concurrency; and keeping ImageMagick updated.
Aug 15, 2026
Paperclip, an open-source control plane for AI agent teams, patched a **critical authorization bypass** tracked as `CVE-2026-41679` that could let a remote attacker self-register on exposed instances, obtain board-level API access, and execute arbitrary commands on the host running the service. The issue affected network-accessible deployments using Paperclip’s default authenticated-mode configuration, where missing authorization checks allowed an attacker to create and approve a CLI challenge, gain a persistent credential, and abuse a company import path that should have been restricted to instance administrators. By importing a crafted `.paperclip.yaml` file, an attacker could define an agent and command that would be executed by a host-level adapter with the permissions of the Paperclip server process. Paperclip also fixed two additional flaws reported by Oasis Security: `GHSA-x8hx-rhr2-9rf7`, a DNS rebinding issue in default `local_trusted` mode that could enable local command execution on developer machines, and `GHSA-xfqj-r5qw-8g4j`, which exposed issue data, skill documentation, and deployment details through missing authentication and authorization checks on several API routes. The fixes were released in source tag **`v2026.416.0`**, and operators were advised to upgrade to that version or later. Public exploit code has increased risk, including a Rapid7 Metasploit module for `CVE-2026-41679`, while reporting cited proof-of-concept exploitation but no confirmed active exploitation in the wild at the time of publication.
Aug 6, 2026
Splunk issued urgent fixes for **CVE-2026-20253**, a critical `CVSS 9.8` vulnerability in **Splunk Enterprise** that allows unauthenticated arbitrary file creation and truncation through a PostgreSQL sidecar service endpoint missing authentication controls. The flaw affects supported Splunk Enterprise releases prior to **10.4.0**, **10.2.4**, **10.0.7**, **9.4.12**, and **9.3.13** depending on branch, and Splunk said **Splunk Cloud is not affected** because it does not use Postgres sidecars. Splunk and national cyber authorities urged administrators to apply updates immediately, noting that no vendor detections or workarounds were initially available for the core issue. Public technical analysis from watchTowr Labs showed the bug can be reached through Splunk Web on port `8000`, which proxies requests to localhost-only PostgreSQL recovery endpoints, enabling attackers to abuse `/v1/postgres/recovery/backup` and `/restore` for filesystem access. Researchers demonstrated a full pre-auth exploitation chain that used path traversal, PostgreSQL connection-string injection, local `.pgpass` credentials, and PostgreSQL large-object export to gain arbitrary file write as the `splunk` user, then overwrite a Splunk Python script to achieve remote code execution. Splunk also disclosed additional Enterprise flaws including **CVE-2026-20251** (`CVSS 8.8`) in the Splunk Secure Gateway app due to unsafe `jsonpickle` deserialization, plus stored XSS and SSRF issues, prompting guidance to patch quickly, restrict dashboard creation and web exposure, and disable or remove vulnerable components where immediate upgrades are not possible.
Jul 23, 2026